November 16, 2017

Steve Tucker says that he is “not opposed” to performing material from any of MORBID ANGEL‘s previous albums, despite the fact that the band’s recent U.S. tour did not include any songs from the David Vincent era of the legendary death metal outfit.

Tucker, who is back for his third spell with MORBID ANGEL, told “The Classic Metal Show” in a new interview that the group’s decision to focus on material that he was involved in writing was a one-time move and it does not mean that future tours will follow the same pattern.

“I think that when people come to see MORBID ANGEL, there’s people that are MORBID ANGEL fans from day one, man — even before Vincent was involved,” he explained (hear audio below). “There’s people that cling to the demos with [original MORBID ANGEL drummer/vocalist] Mike Browning on ’em, dude, and they say that’s the best MORBID ANGEL ever was. Everybody’s got an opinion, and, honestly, it’s all part of MORBID ANGEL.

“When I was in MORBID ANGEL before, I never had an issue with doing any songs from the catalog, and I still don’t,” he continued. “It really kind of got blown out of proportion with people. Somewhere it was claimed that we were refusing to do David Vincent-era [songs], which is bullshit, man. That was never said. What was said was this time out we’re gonna do pretty much a set that was predominantly songs of albums that I’ve been a part of. We never said we were never gonna do this again, or we weren’t gonna do that… I’m not opposed to doing anything like that. Dude, I love that shit.”

Tucker also commented on the fact that Vincent is currently involved with a new project called I AM MORBID, which plays material from MORBID ANGEL‘s “Altars Of Madness” (1989), “Blessed Are The Sick” (1991), “Covenant” (1993) and “Domination” (1995) albums — all records that Vincent originally sang on.

“It’s absolutely my opinion and a fact, if you wanna look it up yourself, that all those songs are not David‘s songs, dude — they’re Trey‘s [Azagthoth, MORBID ANGEL guitarist] songs. Trey wrote most of ’em — I mean, almost every single one of ’em, to be honest with you. All those amazing riffs — they were [Trey‘s]. Yeah, David sang on ’em, but they were MORBID ANGEL riffs, and I guarantee you, in the end, Trey had every bit as much input [as], if not more than, David did. So, honestly, they’re MORBID ANGEL songs, man.”

Vincent recently told Ghost Cult that I AM MORBID is “very different from MORBID ANGEL. If you want to see a MORBID ANGEL show, you know where to go, but this isn’t it,” he said. “I’m only performing songs that I wrote [with I AM MORBID]. If I didn’t write it, we aren’t playing it.”

Vincent added in a separate interview with Canal Metal that he lanched I AM MORBID as a way for him to continue performing classic songs that he was part of creating. “I wrote a lot of songs and there are some very important records and I’m not going to allow disagreements with former [bandmates] to change my ability to perform [MORBID ANGEL songs],” he said. “They’re like children. Just because the parents get divorced, doesn’t mean the parents don’t care about them.”